Last July hottest month ever, heartland of America scorched

NEXTGEN FM – July’s temperature record smashed the previous Dust Bowl depression era records in the 1930’s. July’s record temperature of 77.6 across the U.S. was 3.3 degrees higher than the 20th century average.

July’s temperature was .2 degrees hotter than the previous record of 77.4 degrees set back in 1936.

Food prices are set to skyrocket because of a lack of winter snowfall that led to the drought of 2012. And the heat isn’t helping much.

Food and grain harvest this year are expected to soar and that could raise food prices more than 6%.

According to a U.N. report, global corn prices surged nearly 23% in July, exacerbated by “the severe deterioration of maize crop prospects in the United States, following drought conditions and excessive heat during critical stages of the crop development.”

However, scientists are still unclear if the higher temperatures are part of a longer term trend brought on my global warming:

“These events are kind of what we’d expect with climate change, we’d expect expanding drought, we’d expect warm, record breaking temperatures,” Jake Crouch, a NOAA climate scientist, told NBC News. “But it’s kind of hard to pinpoint this month or past several months as a telltale sign that climate change is happening. The drought is more of a local factor and isn’t necessarily driven by large scale climate change, but is impacting local temperatures. But we’ve also seen an increase in U.S. temperatures overall.”

The drought has produced over 2 million acres of scorched earth due to wildfires in the nation’s interior, the 4th most on record since 2000.